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Challengers seeking seats on the Cambridge City Council are lining up behind a new proposal to address the city’s intractable affordable housing crisis: supporting a nonprofit that plans to buy up land and use it to protect and create low-cost housing.

Three candidates — Ayah Al-Zubi ’23, Dana Bullister, and Stanislav Rivkin, — have championed the work of a nascent nonprofit, the Cambridge Community Land Trust, which plans to acquire land to either build affordable units, maintain existing housing at low prices, or establish new public spaces.

But the CCLT, which was founded in 2021 out of a working group within the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition, is still getting off the ground. It currently owns no land and is still in the process of filing for tax-exempt status.

Once its paperwork is in place, the CCLT plans to solicit land donations and seek out property to purchase. The CCLT will then own the land while offering affordable housing options through affordable rental units or limited-equity ownership, where residents can earn part of the value of the property if it is sold.

Thus far, according to CCLT board members, six to eight different landowners have expressed interest in donating their land — either as soon as possible or in their wills.

In recent years, Cambridge’s housing costs have soared, with the median home price sitting at more than $1 million and the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment at $2,875 a month, according to Zillow.

Skyrocketing costs are a barrier for renters and for would-be homebuyers, and rising property values can also strain longtime homeowners who find themselves facing higher property taxes. In a 2024 survey, housing affordability concerns were the top two issues identified by Cambridge residents as priorities. The list of applicants for income-restricted housing units hit more than 20,000 in 2022.

Cambridge’s City Council has battled for years over how best to address the crisis. In February, the Council adopted a landmark zoning reform ordinance that abolished single-family zoning citywide. The measure passed in pared-back form only after years of debate, and it’s not a panacea: city estimates suggest it will fall short of Cambridge’s goal to create 12,500 new affordable housing units by 2030.

For CCLT’s leaders — and, perhaps, for would-be lawmakers — supporting the land trust is a housing solution that avoids furious debates over zoning and development policy.

“We didn’t identify with the NIMBY/YIMBY binary, and we set ourselves apart by determining that we needed to focus on social housing,” said Stephanie Guirand, a CCLT board member. The group hopes that removing some properties from the market could create a pool of housing that is accessible to low and middle-income households.

Christopher Herbert, the managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, said that a land trust could be a good way to fill that gap.

“One of the things the city lacks is more opportunities for middle-income homeownership,” he said.

The price of a house often increases because of the price of the land it sits on — not the structure itself. By taking a share in the value of a house, a land trust can ensure that it sells for a lower cost.

But the shared equity ownership structure means that residents who live on land trust property may not earn as much when they sell their homes. In some cases, that could lead people to stay in their homes longer — meaning that land trust properties may be slow to reenter the housing market.

Herbert said studies have found that most people who live in shared equity homes tend to move out at roughly the same rates as other homeowners, generally leaving after between five to 10 years on average.

“They do take away equity,” Herbert said. “And so they leave with a fairly substantial nest egg that allows them to have mobility in the housing market. So the evidence that exists suggests that shared equity homeownership models do allow people to gain wealth.”

The CCLT says it plans to offer units for renters as well as homeowners and is looking to acquire property with both single-family homes and multi-family buildings. The group plans to sometimes build new housing on the land it acquires and sometimes preserve existing structures — potentially in a bid to make them more affordable for their original owner, who could otherwise be priced off the land.

Individuals living in land trust properties, “community members,” and the board will be involved in a voting process to decide between the two options. In an ownership situation, the deed for the structure will stipulate how it is used and sold in the future, with the CCLT maintaining ownership of the land. In a rental situation, the organization will maintain ownership of both the land and the structures.

Some City Council candidates think Cambridge should use city money to fund the CCLT. Bullister said in an interview the city should contribute to the trust through land transfers, seed funding, and technical assistance.

Al-Zubi believes that the city could help fund CCLT by increasing the cost of parking permits, increasing residential taxes, or convincing Harvard to increase the money it contributes to the city through its Payment in Lieu of Taxes program.

“People are turning and looking for ways to put the power back in the hands of the people,” Al-Zubi said. “And the Cambridge Community Land Trust does that.”

Rivkin said the city should raise residential taxes to help fund the CCLT.

“We could increase our revenue collection by quite a bit and still have the lowest residential tax rates of any city in the area,” he said.

Rebecca A. Mailman, the CCLT’s executive director, confirmed that the group is looking for support from Cambridge — either through direct financial contributions or through establishing a right of first refusal, which would allow the CCLT to make offers for city property before other bidders.

None of the three candidates think that a land trust alone will solve Cambridge’s affordable housing crisis, but instead say it is intended to work alongside other solutions.

“It’s not about a silver bullet, it’s about a silver buckshot,” Rivkin said. “Community land trusts are a really exciting piece of the puzzle, and would ensure that we can provide some affordability for folks that, frankly, the private market on its own is just not going to provide.”

Herbert said that city investment in the property would be an important but expensive long-term strategy for preserving affordable housing in the city.

“In a city like Cambridge, where land is also scarce, developable land is scarce,” Herbert said. “It’s particularly important to create means of obtaining that housing.”

“The challenge for land trusts, mostly, is trying to get to scale,” he added.

— Staff writer Diego García Moreno can be reached at diego.garciamoreno@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at summer.rose@thecrimson.com.